


Choices

by sanctuary_for_all



Series: Cabin Retirement [1]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Feels, M/M, The fluffy version of the show, coming to an understanding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-25
Updated: 2018-04-25
Packaged: 2019-04-27 16:43:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14429862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sanctuary_for_all/pseuds/sanctuary_for_all
Summary: The only movement from Lecter was the tiniest twitch of one of his fingers. “I lost interest in cooking for a crowd,” he said finally. “Though it’s more common in puberty, it’s not unheard of for adults to abandon even passionate hobbies they no longer feel fit into their lifestyle.”





	Choices

**Author's Note:**

> This is going up solely because my bestie challenged me to pull some things off my hard drive and throw them online.

Will had known something was wrong the moment he saw the crime scene. It was flawed in a way the Chesapeake Ripper would never allow, subtle imperfections that marred the overall design. This was the first kill after months of unexplained absence – Will knew there was no God out there to thank, but he had admitted to Dr. Lecter that he had been grateful for the reprieve – but that would have made appearance even more important for someone like the Ripper.

He told Jack it was a copycat, but didn’t argue when Jack brushed the assertion aside. The other man had grown ever more desperate to catch the Ripper, throwing himself into his ghost hunt to forget the fact that his wife was dying, but Will himself had grown strangely detached. No, he’d always been detached, mind floating unmoored in the darkness – what he felt now was more like distance. The desperation to live was gone.

Abigail had killed, a desperate, bloody act to save her life. Likely, she’d been coerced into helping her father commit earlier murders, a long, slow fight for her life designed to eat away at her soul. Will had no doubt he himself was capable of murder – anyone was, under the right circumstances, and if he could still be called sane it was only by the thinnest of technicalities. It would be easier to turn himself in, present his outstretched hands to an entirely unsurprised Jack, than it would be to turn in Abigail. It would be easiest of all to do neither.

He was profoundly tired, enough that he was no longer afraid of the world slipping away from him. Perhaps that would be easier.

When a second body appeared – too soon, far too soon for the kind of meticulous care that the Ripper considered an important part of his art, the message trite and garbled – Will knew he had been right. Dr. Lecter told him to hunt the killer anyway, drag him out into the light. Whether it was Ripper or copycat, lives would be saved. Even Will’s exhausted mind could accept that logic, though he had learned to recognize the smoothness in the doctor’s voice when he was leading him away from something. He had used it when he’d confirmed Will’s suspicions about Abigail, when he’d admitted all those weeks ago that he’d hidden the body. It was the same voice an adult used when leading a child away from something that was too horrifying for him to see.

The child, inevitably, goes back. It’s human nature to want to see.

But he couldn't stop himself from being grateful when Lecter joined in the hunt. Will told himself it was to watch him, to figure out what was being hidden, but the secret truth was that it was such a relief not to be alone. Lecter still seemed convinced that the job would kill Will, attempting to chase him away and guide him through the latest case in equal measure, but he was still the only one who had never looked at Will with the shadow of disgust or fear in his eyes. It was more of a gift than it should have been.

It should have been enough to make Will stop looking for the horror. At times, Will wanted it to be. But his brain’s decisions had never really been his choice.

They found the killer, a frustrated performance artist who proudly claimed the mantle of the Chesapeake Ripper. There was enough evidence to tie him to at least three of the previous murders that Will *knew* had been the real killer’s work, and Jack had smiled a haunted, dangerous smile and declared the matter closed. A sense of dark celebration fell over the office.

It was ridiculous. Will could believe the dancer had committed the last two murders – he’d seen the blood in the man’s eyes when he’d spoken of them – but he had none of the discipline needed for the others. His artistry was spontaneous, careless, if you could even deign to call it art at all. A copycat trying to duplicate the work of the master and managing only a shadow.

He explained this to Lecter, the only one who Will knew would listen. The doctor’s mouth tightened, a nearly imperceptible movement that Will wasn’t certain Lecter himself even knew happened. It had taken time for Will himself to see such small signals, and he still wasn’t certain if he was becoming more familiar with the doctor’s expressions or if the other man had simply relaxed control of his face.

“The evidence was clear, Will,” Lecter said, his voice even and measured as always. “Perhaps the Chesapeake Ripper simply lost his passion for the killings.”

“And rechanneled it to rants about his failed glory?” Will raised an eyebrow. “That’s not a lack of passion.”

“A re-direction, then. Glory became more important to him than the deaths themselves.”

Will could hear the smoothness in Lecter’s voice, along with something less easily identified. A lie and a truth, perhaps, rolled up together so tightly they couldn’t be differentiated. “But why would he want glory now, after he’d been content with the deaths themselves for so long? And why make the change after the long absence? If he’d cared so much about recognition, he wouldn’t have stopped.”

Lecter paused a beat longer than he usually did. “Not recognition, then.” He turned a hand over, so it rested palm up. “Maybe his life had simply changed.”

The word “How?” was so close to being spoken that Will could practically feel it on his tongue. But his brain had abandoned his vocal chords, studying Lecter’s seemingly innocuous statement as if it had found a particularly telling clue at a crime scene. He stopped, turning it over in his mind as he attempted to figure out what he’d missed.

Once it clicked, his already-primed vocal chords let the words slip free before he could stop them. “You haven’t had a dinner party in months.”

The words hung in the hair with the weight of corpses. Lecter’s expression hadn’t changed, but he had gone so still that there was no evidence he was even breathing. Another corpse.

Or maybe that would be Will. Strangely, he wasn’t as bothered by the thought as he should have been.

A second ticked by. Then two. Only then did Lecter exhale. “Perhaps I simply haven’t invited you.”

Will felt the corner of his mouth curve upward into a smirk. “You’ve practically given me free rein of your house because I’m too damaged to be out wandering on my own. If you’d had a dinner party, I would have seen the signs.”

He wondered where the shock and horror was that he’d felt upon discovering Abigail’s secret. Of course, he might still be wrong, and for the first time might be drawing lines where none existed. The horror wasn’t there because he was simply, finally, losing his last grip on sanity.

But it didn’t feel like madness. It felt quieter, cleaner, like he’d simply decided to focus on a smaller question. His brain could no longer hold the larger one, and therefore could stop tormenting itself with what the answer might be.

He knew the answer to this.

The only movement from Lecter was the tiniest twitch of one of his fingers. “I lost interest in cooking for a crowd,” he said finally. “Though it’s more common in puberty, it’s not unheard of for adults to abandon even passionate hobbies they no longer feel fit into their lifestyle.”

There was the barest hint of strain beneath the words, the opposite of the smoothness Will as might have expected. Truth, then, revealed by accident.

Suddenly, Will was the one who felt as though he were no longer breathing. “Don’t call it something so simple as cooking. You were a master chef.”

Lecter met his eyes, measuring. “Thank you.”

Will didn’t pretend to himself he hadn’t meant the compliment. Lecter had seen the edges. “Why would you abandon something you were so dedicated to?” There was the smallest flicker of something that might have been desperation, buried deep in the center of his chest. It would have been so much easier if it had been nothing more than a belated survival instinct. “Surely passion doesn’t fade that rapidly.”

Lecter leaned forward slightly, as if he were trying to get a closer look at Will’s mind. Normally, he saw it so easily. “This seems like distraction, Will. While I would normally support anything that gave your mind respite from your work, this sudden level of obsession over such a mundane topic is unhealthy.”

There was the smoothness. Will hadn’t mourned its absence. “Think of it as a distraction. Like whatever it was that distracted you from your dinner parties.”

Lecter went still again, then pushed himself to his feet with a sudden force that Lecter so rarely revealed. “This session is no longer productive. I will see you tomorrow, Will.”

Will closed his eyes as Lecter headed towards the door, almost hoping that he would lock them both inside.  That was the question he had thought was being asked.

Instead, he heard the sound of it swinging open with some force, and a sharpness in Lecter’s voice. “Goodnight, Will.”

Something inside him moved, violently. He deliberately reminded himself of the Ripper’s victims, lined the images of them up in his mind. But all he could think about was the fact that the bodies had appeared more sporadically after Will had rejoined the case. Then they had finally, blessedly seemed to stop. The resurrection had been nothing more than a ghost, conjured by another person’s hand.

This … this might be what madness felt like.

“You’re right. I should go.” Will opened his eyes, pushing himself to his feet and turning around to face Lecter. “I was supposed to meet Jack, anyway.”

A lie. Lecter’s expression didn’t change. “It would be rude to keep him waiting.”

The door didn’t close. Will walked forward, through the door, but no scalpel emerged from a secret pocket of a jacket. He stepped clear of the doorway, and Lecter began to close it quite firmly behind him. Tomorrow, there would be a message on Alana’s machine explaining that he had been called away for some emergency and offering his apologies. His office would be untouched, but empty. Defying all logic, Will would still be alive.

Will’s arm shot out, stopping the door from closing completely. Lecter pushed, but Will’s hand held firm.

Lecter stopped pushing, eyes looking at a point somewhere over Will’s shoulder. “Do not do this.” His voice was almost soft. “Go. Speak to Jack.”

Will tried, one more time, to find the lie. But he’d already found it, and it had proven to only be a small part of the question. “Why did you stop?” This time, it was his voice that sounded strained.

Lecter didn’t say anything for a long moment. “Contradictory interests cannot be maintained indefinitely.” He still wouldn’t look at Will. “A choice was becoming more and more necessary. So I made it.”

His heart was starting to race. “You loved holding those dinner parties.”

Lecter’s mouth flickered in something that might have almost been a smile. “I did not feel that strongly about it, Will. I don’t feel that strongly about anything.”

If it was an admonition, it was a surprisingly gentle one. If it was a confession, or a warning…. If he went to Jack with this, the other man would think he was insane. The fact that he didn’t _want_ to go to Jack with this meant that he _was_ insane. It was his job to bring killers to justice. It was his duty.

Even a killer who had suddenly, inexplicably, stopped killing. Who was urging the one man who could identify him to fly free.

He swallowed, throat feeling like it had been scraped raw. “I’m glad you stopped.”

Lecter’s hand tightened on the door. “As I told you, it was incompatible with my current life.”

The one he was going to abandon. The one that Will was professionally and morally obligated to destroy. “Don’t start again. Please.”

Lecter’s expression was a mask. “That’s none of your concern, Will.”

It was uncomfortable to care again, the movement of machinery that he’d thought had been safely left to rust. It was a broken kind of caring, but surely it was better than not caring at all. “I’ve been thinking about quitting. The FBI.”

The door jerked slightly at some involuntary reflex of Lecter’s. “This is … sudden.” There was the strain again, faint enough he once might have missed it.

Will met Lecter’s gaze. He almost, almost thought he could see the answer. “I’m starting to feel like it might be incompatible with my current life.”

They watched each other for a long moment, not saying anything. Then Lecter’s mouth flickered again, something in his eyes that might have been warmth. “Like dinner parties.”

Will smiled. If this was madness, it might not be so bad. “Exactly.”

**Author's Note:**

> Come check out my [original fiction,](https://jennifferwardell.wixsite.com/mybooks) my [blog,](http://jennifferwardell.blogspot.com) or say hi to me on [Tumblr](http://sanctuaryforalluniverses.tumblr.com)!


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